No Easy Solution for World’s Traffic Woes, Experts Find

No Easy Solution for World’s Traffic Woes, Experts Find

By Nivell Rayda on 11:13 am June 9, 2013.
Leipzig, Germany. Faced with budget constraints due to the global financial and economic slowdown, funding infrastructure is a major issue for governments around the world, requiring decision makers and academics to find innovative funding sources and solutions.

Speaking at a three-day summit held by the International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Dave Wetzel, chairman of the Professional Land Reform Group in the United Kingdom, said that the key was to get money from those benefiting most from infrastructure and transportation projects — land owners instead of people using the various modes of transportation.“Land owners profit from the availability of public transport. Their lands increase in value from it without spending anything like production costs. They are profiting from public transportation projects currently financed by taxes paid by hard working people. This is not outrageous, this is obscene,” he said.

But Gerd-Axel Ahrens, director at the Institute for Transport Planning and Traffic at Germany’s Dresden Engineering University (TU), said that the plan, now being advocated by Wetzel’s PLRG in the United Kingdom, would be counterproductive.

“We need to push for more integrated zones and these areas are in the city centers,” he said, referring to an urban planning concept where people live in the same area as their workplaces, schools, shops and other facilities to reduce commuting.

Ahrens said that imposing heavy taxes on land owners in well-connected areas would deter property developers away from these integrated zones and force them to take their projects to the suburbs.

“This will create more transportation problems as the government would be forced to think how to solve congestion problems in these areas,” he said.

Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, agreed that property owners should help finance transportation projects but believed that the solution lies not in imposing heavy taxes but in cooperation.

“In Copenhagen they are developing a new housing area and property developers are financing the extension line of the metro [subway],” he said.

Gurria stressed the importance of more partnerships with the private sector in transportation projects, adding that companies benefited from increased productivity of workers as well as faster transportation of goods. Even insurance companies stand to benefit from better public transport with the reduction of carbon emissions and stress levels of urban dwellers.

“[The] government on its part must play a central role in mobilizing private sector investment for sustainable transport infrastructure,” he said. “Policy makers should promote sound investment principles such as transparency … and open competitive access to sustainable transport infrastructure markets.”

ITF secretary general Jose Viegas meanwhile said that governments also needed to provide legal stability to stimulate investment in the transportation area. “You cannot fully predict the future. It must be outlined [in the agreement] how you will deal [with unforeseen problems], how you adapt so that we can trust each other,” he said.

Viegas added that there were countries that faced low political and public support on public transportation projects, particularly developing ones like Indonesia.

The Jakarta government has been struggling to convince land owners in the Fatmawati area of South Jakarta to provide a fraction of their properties for the construction of an elevated section of the capital’s mass rapid transit project. Meanwhile Jakartans are also resisting policies meant to dissuade them from using private transport like higher parking rates, carpool policies, vehicle restrictions, congestion charges and fuel subsidy elimination.

Jonas Eliasson, a professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, said that governments needed to be tougher in imposing measures to reduce the use of private cars, including unpopular means like congestion charges and fuel taxes. “Our study has shown … up to the point when [the policy] is introduced people tend to have low support [for the measure]. Then they start to reap the benefit of lower commuting times and they adapt and accept the new measures,” he said.

Eliasson said leaders, politicians and the general public might oppose efforts like congestion charges or dedicated bicycle lanes, but that sentiment could change once they were up and running. “Things seem worse before you’ve tried them,” Eliasson said. “The benefits look smaller. The losses look larger.”

Jakarta is mulling on introducing a congestion charge on its major streets, a system known here as the electronic road pricing scheme.

Sascha Ruja of the transportation management firm Q-Free , said that applying congestion charges was the most feasible short-term solution to tackling Jakarta’s notorious traffic problems. “The investment is relatively small. For the price of $2 per car, an electronic toll-collection system can be set up,” he told the Jakarta Globe on the sidelines of the ITF conference.

Alloysius Joko Purwanto, an Indonesian-born senior researcher at Belgium-based private research firm Transport & Mobility Leuven, said in the long run Indonesia needed to revamp its public transportation system. “A good transportation system is closely linked to the development of the GDP as exemplified in European cities where all sorts of businesses flourish in well connected areas,” he said.

Alain Flausch, secretary general of the Brussels-based International Association of Public Transport (UITP), said it was important for governments like that of Indonesia to re-evaluate people’s needs, wants and expectations to convince car owners to start using public transport. “Our survey shows that the people’s first priority [in transportation] is quality while price ranked fifth or sixth,” he said.

Flausch said that the government could still improve the quality of public transport while keeping prices affordable. “In Hong Kong 20 percent of the [public transport] revenue comes from advertising and that is enough to fund maintenance,” he said. “It is important to be less dependent on the state [for financing transportation].”

Viegas said that another key to sustainable transportation projects was to be selective on which projects they wanted to build.

“Governments want to get reelected so they tend to build more and more roads even if it means building them with lower quality. This can be dangerous and have adverse consequences in the long run,” he said.

Lidewijde Ongering, director general of mobility and transport at the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, said that in her country there was a shift from financing new infrastructure projects — which costs a lot of money to build and maintain — to optimizing existing networks, repurposing car lanes to bicycle and looking to small-scale solutions.

“In Rotterdam we provided incentives for employers to have more flexible working hours. That reduces the need to travel during the rush hour,” she said. Ongering added that the program had successfully reduced Rotterdam’s rush hour traffic by 20 percent as well as the need to widen the city’s main bridge, saving the Dutch government millions of euros in construction expenses and future maintenance bills.

Transportation ministers from the 54 member countries of the ITF staged a closed door roundtable discussion on the future of funding transport particularly in light of the growing demand for transportation.

According to OECD figures, air passenger travel is projected to double, air transport to triple and container handling in ports to quadruple by 2030. Investment needs for transport infrastructure to 2030 are estimated at $11 trillion for ports, airports and key rail lines alone.

Indonesia is not a member state of the ITF.